I grew up on crossover foods in the US; that means the American version of only the most famous dishes from each region. That’s well and fine for a sample and an “exotic” dinner when my taste-buds are bored back home, but the real thing is so very, very different once I ventured out on my travels. I have found this is the case with Thai food, as well as the Middle Eastern vegetarian foods I sampled throughout Jordan. The problem with this food pattern though, is that I was …

Now that Ana and I are firmly back from our six months in Southeast Asia, I feel compelled to reflect back on some of the technicalities of traveling. There will be more stories, but some aspects preparing for our trip were far more stressful for me than needed…and once on the road a bit more disturbing. You see, in the weeks leading up to the big trip with my niece Ana, I was a nervous ball of energy rocketing around St. Petersburg. Ana had never left the country before, so I orchestrated …

Where does the time go? It slipped away from me these past six months. Six months. Ana and I have wandered Southeast Asia for 26 weeks together, and there are just two weeks left before we board our plane for the United States and return home just in time for the hot and sticky season in Florida; a summer of humidity so dense your face melts clear down to your navel.
Oh, wait! That’s what it feels like over here now; the monsoon rains are weeks away from hitting and the …

The pace of life in Luang Prabang, Laos is so very charming. Charming is the only one-word description I can come up with for this low-slung city with wide streets (unnatural for much of Southeast Asia), French inspired post-colonial architecture, monks clad in sunny saffron robes, and a humming buzz of relaxed tourism. I wrote earlier about the changes three years and more tourism brought upon this sweet, sleepy country set between Vietnam and Thailand, but what cannot change in the intervening years between my visits,  is the history. Laos was …

Celebrated all over the world, today is World Water Day 2012. A day of education, outreach, support, and ultimately? Hope. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations has organized this day each year for more than a decade. Long before blogging, even before widespread internet. And each year the theme changes, highlighting a different issue related to our global water supply.
In honor of this day, and because Ana and I just finished a homeschool unit on the water cycle (and because I saw this beautiful photoessay on Boston’s …